 The grand ballroom at the main Charter Mechanic Association recently opened to the public for the first time in over 50 years. We spoke with Michael Levine of Acorn Productions at the gallery opening about his group's plans for the space. We are planning to do a variety of educational programs, acting classes, some stage readings of new plays and of course naked Shakespeare performances on first Friday of every month. And what attracted you to the It's beautiful and it's located right on Congress Street. Tell us a little bit about Acorn, your history and what you do. Acorn has been around since the late 90s. We've been through a number of incarnations. The first space we were located in was actually on Congress Street at 496th Congress Street and we were mostly just acting classes and we branched out in Westbrook and we started doing some children's theater productions, some full-length productions, both classics and new plays. And we also started our naked Shakespeare group which does free performances of Shakespeare for the public and also for educational institutions like colleges, libraries and other schools, things like that. And basically our mission is just to get people involved in the arts by having them act. Like we believe that acting is the most exciting thing that someone can do to get turned on to the arts. And what kind of acts are we going to see here tonight at the opening of the hall? We have a lot of different folks involved. We have dark follies, vaudeville. We have the apparatus dance theater. We have the improvised puppet project. Then we have people improv with running with scissors. We have our naked Shakespeare group. We have Michael Troutman who's a physical comedian, kind of a clown. And our last group is Stages Academy doing teen Shakespeare. And there's quite a variety of things that you have for tonight. Is that indicative of the kind of things that you put on? Well, we're pretty much straight theater. Like we do Shakespeare and we do new plays. That's pretty much our gig. But this space is a multi-purpose space. Acorn is only one of the tenants. We're kind of the lead tenant and the collaborator helping to fundraise the space and get it up and running and get the modern equipment we need in here to be able to use it as a professional venue. But these groups that are coming in are all their own companies. They all do their own thing. And we're just kind of helping to facilitate bringing it together. Tom, there was a lot of work that had to be done to get the certificate of occupancy to allow the Gallaudet Open tonight. What kind of work had to be done? We had to install emergency lights, exit signs. We had to upgrade the fire alarm system so that we had pull stations and modernized all of the existing horn and strobe systems. And we had to do a lot of fire escape work, which required the fire escape to 170 years old. So we had to increase the supports and just do some minor repairs. Actually, it's a remarkably good condition because the steel from 1870, from the 1850s is much better than it is today. In building this old, what kind of challenges do you face trying to do all of that kind of work? Well, the challenge is it's an old building. And so in this particular case, there's a lot of deferred maintenance. There's windows that need to be replaced because they're very old window. We're not replacing windows, we're restoring windows. We're also putting new storm windows to give us some better thermal protection. You also had some work done on the classic black front door. Tell us about that. Yes. We were fortunate to receive a facade grant from the city of Portland for $20,000, which we matched with our own $20,000. And that included restoring those doors. It involved repainting the front. The old granite had a number of anchor holes that were iron and it was a rusted stain. So we had all that cleaned up and we put in some new grouting so that it matched the existing granite and basically just kind of brought it back to life. And as you walk in, you'll see this beautiful mosaic. And we had that repaired by Caposa Tile, who donated their effort. So what kind of work still has to be done, major project? Well, we also have a grant through the main historic preservation commission to restore all of the front windows of this building on the Congress Street side. That's about a $36,000 grant. But we need to replace the other windows on the sides. There's another seven windows and each big arch window represents three windows in themselves. And what are your plans for the future for this space? We're hoping, besides doing First Friday Naked Shakespeare, that we'll be doing ongoing play readings and, of course, acting classes of various types. And if people want more information about Acorn or about fundraising to help out, where can they get more information? It's all on our website, which is acorn-productions.org.